GLENDALE TRAINING HOMEGROWN TEACHERS FOR LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY.

Byline: Eric Wahlgren Daily News Staff Writer

Faced with a constant shortage of teachers who speak Armenian, Spanish and Korean, the Glendale school district decided three years ago to start searching for job candidates in a most obvious place: in the classroom.

With the start of a new school year this week, a new crop of former teacher's assistants with foreign language skills got a class of their own through a special district program designed to fast-track the credentialing process.

District officials say the novel program - there are only 12 others in California - helps them meet state mandates for bilingual teachers and put people with extensive in-class experience in teaching positions.

``This is a way of home-growing your own talent, nurturing it and having it flourish,'' said Alice Petrossian, Glendale Unified's director of special projects and intercultural education. ``There is a largely untapped pool of employees who have developed experience in education through their day-to-day work and would make excellent teachers.''

About 46 percent of Glendale Unified's nearly 30,000 students are identified as ``limited English proficient.'' Most of those students speak Armenian as their first language. Spanish is the next most spoken language, followed by Korean.

Petrossian said many of the more than 40 graduates of the Glendale Paraprofessional Teacher Training Program were district parents who had long worked as teacher's assistants before they were recruited for the program.

Sookmin Yi, 44, was a teacher's assistant for seven years before she went through the program and landed a job as an eighth-grade math teacher at Rosemont Middle School.

``It's great,'' said Yi, a native Korean speaker whose two children have attended Glendale schools. ``I am fully responsible for the kids. I can plan my own lessons. I am a real teacher now.''

Yi said she had often considered being a teacher but had to put off her dream because she was raising her children and could not afford to take the time off from work to go back to school full time.

``Before I heard about this program, I thought it was too late for me to become a teacher,'' Yi said.

Other candidates, like 25-year-old Betty Demerjian, had recently graduated from college and were approached by the district while they were considering teaching careers during their stints as teacher's assistants.

Demerjian, who speaks fluent Armenian and Spanish, became a sixth-grade teacher at John Marshall Elementary School last year after completing the one-year program while working as a teaching assistant.

``I felt really comfortable in the classroom because I had been here before,'' said Demerjian of her first day on the job as a teacher.

Demerjian said that although she teaches exclusively in English, four of her 32 students essentially understand only Armenian while another student speaks only Spanish.

``The languages come in handy,'' said Demerjian, who spoke Armenian at home with her parents growing up in Glendale and learned Spanish in school. ``I am able to give them explanations in their language, and I often stay after school and help them with their homework.''

Petrossian said the district has been striving to hire teachers who reflect the diversity of the school district's student body and who can help the district meet state requirements for bilingual teachers.

``So often when a child is behaving well or poorly, a teacher will say, `I will talk to your parents,' '' Petrossian said. ``If you can't speak the language of the parents, then that becomes very difficult.''

Founded three years ago with an initial $68,000 state grant, the program pays for each prospective teacher's tuition, books and other expenses for the credentialing program at California State University, Los Angeles.

The candidates perform their student teaching requirement while keeping their jobs as teacher's assistants, allowing them to speed up the credentialing process and to hold on to a paying job.

About 15 teacher's assistants go through the program every year, but Petrossian said the district hopes to increase that number by looking for good candidates in other school jobs, including custodians and receptionists.

Besides a push to recruit more teachers to reflect the cultural makeup of the district's student body, there has also been a surging demand for new teachers because of the statewide initiative to reduce class sizes.

``We have to compete with other districts for new teachers,'' Petrossian said. ``The (paraprofessional) program enables us to build our own pipeline.''

According to a state official, the Los Angeles Unified School District and districts in Anaheim and Azusa also operate similar programs.

``This is a great way of getting people who have hundreds of hours working with children into teaching positions,'' said Kathleen McClure, Demerjian's principal at Marshall.

CAPTION(S):

chart, photo

PHOTO Betty Demerjian, fluent in three languages, became a teacher through Glendale's quick training program.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News

Chart: Ethnic breakdown